True Colors
by PPP SSC
Summary: Bogo's unfortunate high school experiences lead to him becoming the Chief of Police, but at the price of his willingness to trust or be himself. He learns to trust again, and to love, with the help of his sincere and free-spirited front desk officer. Bogo/Clawhauser. Prequel/interquel. Rated T for language and mild adult themes.
**True Colors**

 **Zootopia High, 1993**

It was another great year for the graduating class. High schoolers would soon graduate, moving onto a new community. Some of the most prestigious graduating students this year were Elinor Leopold (4.0, valedictorian) and Gilroy Heff (quarterback of the football team, signed on to the majors). The Last-Pick Clique cared not for the scholarly prestige and all the drama and elitism that came with it. It consisted of four animals who were all known only by nicknames on campus: a gothic boar called Potbelly, a nerdy female panda called Black Holes, a fashion victim of a vixen called Flame Tail, and an awkward Cape buffalo bull called Horns, desperate to fit in wherever he could. As far as Horns was concerned, this was his home.

He got along swimmingly with the group, Flame Tail especially. In fact, he thought of her as his best friend. She was his confidant. He had told her about how much he secretly liked the cheesy pop music that Potbelly and Black Holes decried daily. He had told her about his dreams to become a gymnast even though everyone thought that was not a proper bull profession. She had told him that it didn't matter. He trusted her with all his heart and soul.

One day, when they were hanging out at her house playing on her family's Super Gnuntendo, she leaned over and kissed him. He immediately freaked out and fell backwards. "What was that all about?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," Flame Tail said, "I know this is sudden, but I have a feeling that we're meant to be together, Horns."

"Wh-what makes you say that?" Horns asked.

"You know, we spend all this time together," Flame Tail said, "It's bound to be true love… surely, someone as sensitive as you must believe in true love, right?"

"I… um…" Horns said, "I'm sorry. It's not you. You're very attractive I'm sure but… I just… you know, I've never really met a girl who I felt a connection with… like that."

"Oh," Flame Tail said, narrowing her eyes and growling. "I think that we've played enough for the day."

"I'm really very sorry," Horns said. "You are a wonderful vixen, and I like you a lot… just…"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," she said bitterly.

Horns got his things up and left. He felt bad because he hurt his best friend, but he knew that it was better to tell the truth and have it sting a little than to lie, have it snowball and blow up in her face, and have it tear her apart.

The next time Horns returned to campus he found that everyone was snickering as he walked by. "What's going on here?" he asked Potbelly.

"Get away from me, freak," the boar responded, sneering in disgust. Horns was stunned.

"Black Holes, can you tell me what's going on?" he asked.

"I always had a hunch you were that way," she responded. "But did you really have to break the news so roughly to Flame Tail?"

"Had a hunch I was what way?" Horns asked.

A nasty name was hurled at him from across the hall by a wildebeest he had probably only spoken to twice in his entire time at high school, and then he knew.

"Shut up!" he cried, "You don't know anything about me!"

"We know enough," said a ewe. "Flame Tail told us all about it."

"Flame Tail…" Horns said. "But… she… she's my friend. She wouldn't spread nasty rumors…"

"Yeah, well…" the ewe said, "I certainly didn't hear it from a different source."

"And by the way," Potbelly chimed in, "Your dream sucks and your taste in music is horrible."

Horns' eyes widened as he realized that she was the only mammal he had ever told about his dream or his secret love of pop music. He frowned. "Enough!" he screamed angrily.

Everyone looked at him. "I'll have you know that these rumors are baseless, and I can prove it. Do you want to know what my real dream is? I am going to become a police officer. And do you want to know why? So that when any one of you eventually does something illegal to go along with your wretched treatment of other fellow mammals, I can put you behind bars where you belong. Good. Day. To. You. Oh and, if you see Flame Tail? Tell her she just lost the best friend she will ever have."

He told his family about the incident, though was careful not to mention what exactly they accused him of, because he was worried about what they would do if they thought it was true. Deep down, he was worried that it _was_ true.

"Well, son," his father said, "You should know better than to trust a fox."

"I'm sure not all foxes are deceitful sneaks," Horns said.

"That's what you said when you met this one," his mother chimed in.

"Yeah, but…" he began, before his father interrupted.

"Trust me, son," he said, "You're better off avoiding them altogether."

He sat silently, and pondered the thought. He really hadn't gotten to know any foxes in his life aside from Flame Tail, whom he had trusted with all his heart and who betrayed him. Maybe his father was secretly right.

He spent the next several years building muscle mass and eventually gained the sort of build that any bull would envy. He graduated valedictorian from the Zootopia Police Academy, much to the pride of his family.

Deep down, he still regretted giving up on his dream for the sake of his reputation, but he knew that he was a good fit for this job as well. He didn't graduate valedictorian for no reason, after all. He was skilled, he was strong, and he was honorable. He was everything the sitting Chief of Police, who was getting on in his years, would look for in a successor. And the day that he announced his retirement he called, "Bogo? A word?"

"Oh god," said Bogo, "I hope that I haven't done anything bad."

"Bad?" the Chief said, "You have been nothing but a model employee from the day that you got here. Which is why… I have decided to promote you. To Chief of Police."

Bogo almost fell out of his chair. "You… you're serious?"

"You start the day I retire," the Chief said, smiling at Bogo.

"Ha," he said, "I will run the organization with all of the valor that you and all my other mentors have instilled in me."

"I know you will," the Chief said. "I know you're strong enough to lead, smart enough to make sound decisions, and ethical enough to avoid scandals. Good luck, Chief Bogo."

The name "Chief Bogo" was like music to his ears. It was not given to him by his parents arbitrarily, nor was it a nickname given to him by former friends he'd really rather forget. It was a name that he earned, all on his own, blood, sweat, and tears, and bestowed on him by the mammal best equipped to judge his success in that regard.

 **Zootopia Police Department Precinct 1, 2010**

It was just another day at the Zootopia Police Department. The last front desk officer had found employment elsewhere and had given notice. Chief Bogo was looking at a list of candidates for replacements, and most of them seemed to be the same. The majority of the applicants were female sloths with a few ewes and koalas mixed in.

One name particularly stood out to him. "Benjamin Clawhauser." He could tell from the last name, this was a predator, and from the first name, a male. When he first got promoted, he promised himself he would never, ever allow species or gender to color his hiring decisions, but he couldn't help himself from thinking curiously if this animal applied to the correct position.

"Benjamin Clawhauser?" Bogo called.

A rotund cheetah with a radiant grin got up and said, "Present and accounted for, sir!" He saluted the chief.

"You… umm…" Bogo said, "Just want to make sure we're on the same page. You applied for a non-field position. It's just in-office work. You understand this, right?"

"Of course," he said, "I read all the job duties and it seems that it's still possible that I may need to go in the field in case of extreme emergency, but that that's a very unlikely occurrence, correct?"

"Yeah, we haven't had an incident requiring the desk officer to enter the field in over ten years," Bogo said. "There's almost always at least one field officer in the room to go in her stead… or his, I suppose."

"I'm glad to hear that," Clawhauser said.

"Glad," Bogo said, "You're not a typical predator are you?"

Clawhauser giggled. "No," he said.

"Or, I'm guessing, a typical male?" Bogo asked.

Clawhauser said, laughing heartily, "Not even a little, Chief." He smiled. "To be honest, I'm not a typical anyone. In fact, the nicest people I know call me 'eccentric' and some of the slightly ruder ones call me 'weird' or even 'freakish'. But you know… why would I want to be anyone other than me?"

Bogo took note of Clawhauser's body language. It was much less tense than his own. He listened to the tone of his voice and found it sounded much freer. Clawhauser was totally confident, and yet, not arrogant. He had a perfect balance of pride and humility that Bogo was envious of.

"Benjamin Clawhauser," Bogo said, "I would like to ask you a few more questions."

"Sure," he said.

"Greatest strength?" Bogo asked.

"Umm, well, I guess it could be the fact that I love everyone," Clawhauser said. "Other animals always say I have a great smile and that I'm really really nice. I don't know how true that is though, because I do things wrong occasionally and then feel really bad about them."

"I'm sure they're completely right, then," Bogo said, "Well, what would you say is your greatest weakness?"

"Oh, that's easy. I have a really horrible attention span. Like, it's so bad you could probably distract me for hours simply by saying the words 'frosted with sprinkles' when I'm hungry," Clawhauser said. "Of course, all you have to do to get my mind back on track is to gently remind me of your point. It's embarrassing to admit, and it might have just killed my chances of getting hired, but it's the truth and I feel that anyone considering hiring me deserves to know it."

Bogo was pleasantly surprised by how forthright Clawhauser was when describing his own weakness.

"Why did you leave your last position?" Bogo asked.

"Umm, well, they said I wasn't the right fit," Clawhauser said. "Which I think is their nice way of saying they didn't like the fact that I was always talking about how much I loved food and making friends and pop music and attractive boys."

Bogo's ears perked up at that statement. He was open about _everything_.

"What skills do you bring to this position?" Bogo asked.

"Well, I'm a good listener, I am devoted to accuracy, and I am great at communications," Clawhauser said, "I'm also very quick to complete a task once I start it. It's umm… getting me to remember to start it that's the problem."

"It's alright, Clawhauser," Bogo said, "I've already made my decision."

"Oh, umm…" Clawhauser said, certain he had bombed the interview. "I guess I'll see myself out."

"Not without your offer letter," Bogo said, smiling at him.

"You… you're hiring me?" Clawhauser asked. "But… why? I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of other mammals who would give better answers to your questions than I have."

"You're not wrong about that," Bogo chuckled. "But I just met you, and I already trust you," Bogo said. "I haven't said that to a single mammal in seventeen years. At the very least, I know that you sincerely believe everything you told me about yourself. Even if you suck at everything, I won't regret taking a chance on you for that reason alone... and so, I'm signing you on for a trial period. You start tomorrow. Oh, and by the way? Feel free to talk about your passions as much as you want, as long as you get your work done."

"Thanks, Chief," Clawhauser said, beaming affectionately.

Once the interview ended and Clawhauser had left the room, Bogo said, "I'll be damned. He does have a great smile."

Once the trial period ended, Bogo gave Clawhauser a performance review that culminated in Clawhauser keeping his job.

"Wowzers, Chief, you're so nice!" he said upon hearing the news, grinning sweetly.

"You think I'm _nice?_ " Bogo asked, "What the fuck is wrong with you!?"

Clawhauser stared widely at Bogo in alarm for a few seconds. Then he laughed softly. "Remember what you told me in the interview?"

"No," Bogo said.

"About how you trusted me?" Clawhauser asked.

"Yes," Bogo said. "That's right, I did."

"Well, I trust you because what you say is the worst thing that you think, so if you say I'm good at my job, you must really mean it," Clawhauser said.

Bogo didn't respond, but he noticed Clawhauser's gentle smile, his soft eyes, all of his features, and as he took all of this in, a thought struck him that he finally found an answer for a question that had plagued him for the past 24 years, and he wasn't happy about it. He tried to ignore it but it became impossible to as Clawhauser continued, "You might be rough around the edges, but what really matters is what's deep inside. Anyway, I should get back to work." He left the room, saying good-bye to him in a sing-song manner.

Deep down, Bogo knew that this new and different feeling he felt for Clawhauser was an honest-to-god crush, but he didn't want to admit it to himself. He attempted to ease his mind by repeating a mantra he did not truly believe, "It isn't like that, it isn't like that, it isn't like that…"

 **Zootopia Police Department Precinct 1, 2016**

Bogo paced across his office floor. After all the drama involved in keeping Clawhauser on the force in the heat of the race riots, he couldn't hide this from himself any longer. He needed a friendly ear. Someone he knew he could trust completely. Someone who would never judge him, no matter what. "Clawhauser, report to my office immediately," he paged, "It's very important."

Clawhauser rushed up to Chief Bogo's office. "You said it was very important?" he asked.

"Shut the door," Bogo said.

"Oh, uh, okay, Chief," Clawhauser said, complying. "What is it?"

"I have a secret," Bogo said, "And you have to promise not to tell anyone."

"I get it," Clawhauser said. "Just like you being a fan of Gazelle, right?"

"Yeah," Bogo said, "But more urgent."

"More urgent," Clawhauser said.

"Clawhauser, I…" Bogo said. He couldn't get the words out at first. He felt a lump in his throat as if he was about to start crying. "I… I'm gay," he said finally.

"Oh," Clawhauser said. He really desperately wanted to jump for joy at the news, but thought better of it when he saw Bogo's face. He put a sympathetic paw on Bogo's shoulder.

"But I… I mean, after all these years… I'm the goddamn Chief of Police," Bogo said. "Can I really be… you know?"

"Of course you can," Clawhauser said, "You know there are plenty of strong, tough gay guys. Not all of us are fruitier than a punchbowl." He pondered briefly and then continued, "Which I'm sure is very convincing coming from me." Bogo laughed a bit at that comment. "See, it's not so bad," Clawhauser said, "You can still laugh so that's good."

"How on earth are you so open about everything?" Bogo asked.

"I… um… well," Clawhauser said.

"I mean, let's be honest here, I'm sure you must have been ridiculed a lot growing up, right?" Bogo asked.

"Oh, yeah, all the time. I was chubby; I was weird; it was like I was wearing a flashing neon sign that said 'I like boys' in all caps… some of the prey I went to school with didn't trust me because of my sharp teeth and claws, and the Great Cats excluded me because I was short and couldn't roar," Clawhauser said, "But one day I decided I didn't care what anyone thought of myself except for me. And since then, ironically, 99% of the conversations I have about this result in the other person saying I'm selling myself short…"

"Clawhauser, I…" Chief Bogo began.

"Yes?" Clawhauser asked eagerly, his tail curling and his eyes slowly narrowing.

"I… umm…" Bogo said, "Thank you. Thank you for being here for me. You are truly, without a doubt, the best friend I could ever have."

"Oh, uh, okay," Clawhauser said, not quite succeeding at hiding his disappointment. "I'll see you again, Chief."

"Coward," Bogo muttered after Clawhauser had left the room. "Why can't you just tell him how you feel?"

He remembered the incident 23 years ago, and the last thing he wanted was to put Clawhauser in the same awkward position he was in. Even worse, he was Clawhauser's _manager_ and if he had told Clawhauser out of the blue how he truly felt, he may have inadvertently made Clawhauser feel an _obligation_ to be his boyfriend, which he definitely did not want to do.

Every time that Bogo talked to Clawhauser for the next three months, he tried to bring up the subject. Every time he did, he chickened out, until one day when he discreetly followed Clawhauser back down to his desk and heard him say to himself, in a disappointed tone of voice, "I guess I should just accept that he doesn't like me that way."

Bogo swallowed, deeply sighed, and then said, "You uh… you might want to check your facts on that one."

"Chief Bogo?" Clawhauser asked.

"Come with me," Bogo said, leading Clawhauser back up to his office to give them some privacy.

"Oh, okay!" Clawhauser said, following.

"The truth is… Benjamin Clawhauser, do you know why it took me so long to admit this to myself?" Bogo asked.

"Growing up in a society that hates those that fall outside the norm?" Clawhauser asked.

"Well, there was that… and that I never truly knew what it meant to feel in love… until I met you," Bogo said. "The truth is… I've been wanting to tell you I'm head over hooves for you since I told you my secret, but I was afraid that… you know… you didn't feel the same way, and the last thing I'd want is to put you in a position where you'd have to either break my heart or enter a relationship you didn't want to under the belief it would affect your job."

"Chief Bogo," Clawhauser said, "I've been in love with you for over five years. Like, I fell for you while I was still a temp. I… I really haven't been making that obvious enough?"

"You never told me," Bogo said.

"I did so, with my eyes and my tail and my tones of voice," Clawhauser defended.

"But you never _told_ me," Bogo reasserted.

"I dunno, I guess I just didn't think I needed to," Clawhauser said. "I mean… I thought that constantly fawning over you would have been enough of a clue."

"You know, you're not the first friend that I've had that was in love with me without me realizing it," Bogo said.

"I can believe that," Clawhauser said, "You're extremely attractive."

"But…" Bogo continued, "You're the first one who deserved to be called my friend and the first one I love back."

"I don't understand," Clawhauser said, "What's so special about me? You're so handsome and strong and brave and capable and… you could have anyone you want."

"That's all just the surface," Bogo said, "You said what really matters is what's deep inside. And what's deep inside Chief Bogo is an insecure calf who fell in with the wrong crowd, had his reputation ruined, and crawled back out by overcompensating and trying to hide everything about him that makes him unique. And you are the only mammal I am comfortable telling any of this to, because you are the only one who I am absolutely certain will never hold any of it against me."

"Chief Bogo, you don't have to be insecure," Clawhauser said, "Everything that makes you unique, I'm sure will just make me love you even more. After all, one of the things you did that made my heart flutter most was defending me from hostile comments when you didn't think I could hear them… and then the time that I saw you playing with the Gazelle app… and when you decided to come out to me…"

"I didn't want to be a police officer in twelfth grade," Bogo admitted.

"You didn't?" Clawhauser asked.

"Until I had my reputation ruined," Bogo said, "I wanted to be a gymnast."

Clawhauser squealed delightedly, "That would have been so wonderful." He continued in a normal tone of voice, "But you're a perfect Chief of Police too, and I would be super happy if you kept working as the Chief of Police, but if you ever want to become a gymnast I'll endorse that wholeheartedly too because you should do what makes you happy no matter what society…"

Before Clawhauser could get another word out, Bogo's mouth completely covered his. The kiss deepened, and Clawhauser let out a small whimper. Bogo parted and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Umm…" Clawhauser said, "The inside of my mouth isn't the most inviting place. My tongue is like a cactus."

"Really?" Bogo asked. He raised an eyebrow, said, "I didn't notice," and kissed Clawhauser again.

Once they parted their kiss, Bogo said, "I realize this is abrupt, Benjamin, but will you sign this?" He took a piece of paper out of his cabinet.

"What is it?" Clawhauser asked.

"This… is a love contract. It stipulates that you are entering this relationship of your own free will and that I am not allowed to let our personal relationship interfere with our professional one," Bogo said.

"Ooh!" Clawhauser said, "I'll sign it right now!" Bogo wasn't totally certain, but he could have sworn he heard Clawhauser purring as he signed the paper.

"Now that that's taken care of," Bogo said, "Would you like to go to the Gazelle concert with me… honey?"

"I'd love to… sweetheart," Clawhauser responded, trying really hard not to squeal as he said that.

The two left the office together that night, paw in hoof.


End file.
